Back-to-school
shopping will be a new challenge this year for students—and some of the
teachers—at Fees Middle School.

Starting
with the fall semester, the approximately 1,030 sixth-, seventh- and
eighth-graders must conform to a school “uniform” code that bans the
ever-popular jeans, cargo or carpenter-style shorts, and tee shirts with any
message not approved by the school.

The
Governing Board of Tempe School District No. 3 voted 4-0 on March 23 to
impose the mandatory uniform policy, making Fees the first middle school in
the district to impose such a restriction. Fees will join elementary schools
Nevitt and Wood in requiring uniforms.

The
new policy means that students must wear polo, golf or button-down Oxford
shirts in solid colors—red, white, or light blue only--and slacks, walking
shorts, capris, skirts or jumpers made of uniform twill or cotton in solid
khaki, navy or black colors. Even their socks must match.

No
other public school in the Kyrene Corridor requires uniforms or has such a
restrictive dress code.

“Right
now, there are no Kyrene schools that require uniforms,” said Johnny Cruz,
spokesman for the Kyrene School District.

“There
have been some schools that discussed requiring uniforms in the past, but
it’s never gotten to the point of making a decision.”

Terry
Locke, director of community relations for the Chandler Unified School
District, said the issue of school uniforms “has come up from time to
time” in Chandler but so far only the Chandler Traditional Academy’s
Liberty Campus, which opened in 2001 to promote a more traditional education
for kindergarten through the sixth grade, requires that its students adhere
to a “prescribed” dress code.

The
Liberty campus requires students to wear patriotic colors--red, white or
blue--“that meet the expectations of parents who prefer that sort of
thing,” Locke said.However,
even the Liberty Campus allows its students to wear jeans.

Pueblo
del Sol Middle School in Phoenix, part of the Isaac elementary district, was
one of the first middle schools in the Valley to require uniforms. Isaac’s
student population is approximately 88 percent Hispanic, six percent Black
and five percent White.

The
uniform policy at Fees supersedes a dress code already in place
district-wide.

“It
is important for our children not to interrupt instruction by wearing
distracting or revealing clothing, spaghetti straps, tube tops, shirts with
huge armholes (so the torso is exposed), very short shorts or T-shirts with
liquor ads or inappropriate words or messages are not appropriate for
school,”a message posted on the district’s website advises parents.

The
Fees uniform policy was pressed by a number of teachers who pledged to the
Governing Board that they, too, will follow the new dress code rules.Fees Principal Reynaldo Cruz (no relation to the Kyrene district’s
Johnny Cruz) modeled a red shirt and khaki trousers at the Board meeting,
saying, “We think we look sharp.”

Principal
Cruz said approximately 870 families of Fees students will be affected by
the mandatory uniform requirement.

Parents
were invited to vote on the uniform policy, with one vote accepted per
family over a nine-day period in February.

According
to Cruz, a total of 453 ballots were cast, with 370 “yes” votes
supporting mandatory uniforms.

School
officials had said the uniform policy would be rejected if less than 80
percent of the votes were in support of uniforms.

By
school officials’ calculations, the “yes” vote was 81.67 percent of
the total ballots cast.

However,
Tempe district officials acknowledge that as many as 100 of the 453 ballots
were cast by teachers at Fees.“Historically,
staff members have been allowed to participate in votes like this one at
Fees.They are not only
affected by the vote, but they are also in close communication with parents
of their students,” said Monica Allread, the district’s public
information coordinator.

Principal
Cruz told Governing Board members that he did not have a specific count of
the teachers’ vote, but that he had been told that some voted “yes” on
uniforms and some voted “no.”

Teachers
also made up the bulk of the audience at the Governing Board meeting where
mandatory uniforms for Fees were discussed.

“Students
act out in various ways the way they dress,” said Gerald Hashem, a Fees
teacher. He said mandatory uniforms will give students a “wholesome”
look, make it more difficult for students to conceal weapons (in part
because shirts must be tucked in) and will help school officials identify
“anyone who does not belong on the campus.”

Having
students wear uniforms also will teach them that when they come to school
they are “at their jobs,” Hashem said.

Uniforms
will improve the perception of academics at Fees, agrees Karin Moffitt,
another supporter of the uniform policy.The ways students dress today “is a distraction … with lots of
underwear showing from both boys and girls,” she said.

Parents
of some students from neighboring Rover Elementary School choose not to send
their children to Fees, Moffitt said.

“I
want to have a great school in my neighborhood,” said Kristin Shaeffer,
another vocal supporter of mandatory uniforms at Fees.“Uniforms will allow students to come (to school) with the attitude
to learn instead of goof off,” she said.

Opponents
of the mandatory uniforms questioned the voting process, especially the
decision to allow teachers to vote on how parents must dress their children.

Carolyn
Greer said the uniform policy was changed several times during the
discussions that led up to the controversial vote and “parents may not
have understood the policy they were voting on.”The policy is too restrictive, even mandating the types of material
students must wear, she said.

If
staff votes were excluded the mandatory uniform policy probably would not
have received the required 80 percent support, she said.

Another
opponent of mandatory uniforms, Dawn Rumore, said she had understood after
attending two meetings on the policy that the uniform policy would pass only
if 80 percent of parents supported it --not 80 percent of the votes cast by
both parents and teachers.

“Many
parents understood that not voting was the same as a ‘no’ vote,” she
said, noting that fewer than half the affected families cast ballots.

“We
felt we made a very good-faith effort to extend voting to all interested,”
Principal Cruz said.

He
acknowledged that requiring uniforms is “a very substantial and
substantive change” for parents and said the policy “has to be open to
tweaking … as we go along.”

Fees
is one of the southernmost schools in the Tempe School District No. 3,
drawing students from an area bounded by Baseline Road on the north,
Guadalupe Road on the south, McClintock on the east, and Rural Road on the
west.The school also buses
students to and from the Town of Guadalupe.

Some
typical reasons for requiring school uniforms include eradicating gang
presence, improving students’ self-perception, and improving the
educational climate.

A
study published by an Arizona State University professor and graduate
student in Education and Urban Society in 2003 found that perceptions
of gang presence did not vary for students, but that teachers
from schools with uniform policies perceived lowerlevels of gang
presence.

Uniforms’
impact on students’ self-perceptions was less positive, however.Students from schools without uniforms reported higher
self-perception than students from schools with uniform policies, and
studentand teacher perceptions of school climate did not vary
acrossuniform policy.

The
study, titled Effect on Perceptions of Gang Presence, School Climate, and
Student Self-Perceptions was conducted byKathleen
Kiley Wade, then an ASU graduate student, and Professor Mary E. Stafford of
ASU’s College of Education’s Psychology in Education Division.

The
study interviewed 415 urban public middleschool
students and 83 teachers.

Coincidentally,
Wade interned at the Tempe School District during her studies at ASU.